In 2026, Condé Nast Traveler named “dry tourism” one of its travel trends of the year — the idea that travelers are choosing, moment by moment, whether or not to drink, rather than treating sobriety as an all-or-nothing choice. It’s a shift the hospitality and travel industries are now actively responding to.
The data backs it up. According to a Gallup poll cited by Islands.com, only 54% of American adults reported drinking alcohol in 2025 — the lowest share since 1939. A separate Gallup survey from August 2023 found that just 62% of adults under 35 drink, down from 72% two decades earlier, while the share of 18-to-34-year-olds who believe even one or two drinks a day is bad for health rose 18 percentage points (via Fox5 DC).
We’ve already covered New York’s zero-proof bar scene in a separate piece — check it out here if you haven’t:
→ [NYC’s Sober Bars Are Quietly Multiplying — The City’s Vibe Is Shifting]
This piece looks at what’s happening beyond the bars: festivals, airlines, and hotels.
On September 27, 2025, Chelsea’s Altman Building hosted what organizers billed as New York’s first all zero-proof festival, “Drinks with Benefits.” The event was produced by Bottle Raiders (founded by Dan Abrams) and featured more than 60 zero-proof and functional beverage brands.
The lineup was ambitious: a tasting gallery, a mixology lab teaching mocktail-making, an omakase pairing experience with Cipriani Café, an all-day DJ lounge, and a non-alcoholic beer garden. The festival also ran its own “Zero Proof Choice Awards,” judged by a panel of nine experts across more than 200 submissions — a sign that non-alcoholic nightlife is maturing into its own industry, not just a workaround (sources: BevNet, Time Out New York).
New York isn’t the first city to try this format. Washington, D.C.’s “Mindful Drinking Fest,” running since 2022, drew more than 40 non-alcoholic beverage brands and over 120 products at its 2024 edition. The event is led by Derek Brown, the bartender behind D.C.’s celebrated Columbia Room (sources: Washingtonian, Fox5 DC). The spread of these city-scale festivals suggests non-alcoholic drinking culture is moving from niche to mainstream market.
The dry tourism wave extends into how people travel and where they stay.
In the air, American Airlines now stocks Athletic Brewing’s non-alcoholic “Free Wave Hazy IPA” in its Flagship and Admirals Club lounges across the US — confirmed directly in the airline’s own January 2026 press release. Starting February 1, 2026, American also added the beer to its inflight beverage menu, marking the airline’s first non-alcoholic beer served onboard. JetBlue got there earlier, adding Athletic Brewing’s “Upside Dawn Golden” to its inflight offerings back in 2023 — non-alcoholic beer is quickly becoming a standard option across major US carriers (sources: Business Traveller, Parade, Tasting Table).
On the hotel side, Highball, the bar at Tempo by Hilton New York Times Square, offers mocktails alongside its cocktail menu (source: The Points Guy). A 2023 Hotels.com survey found more than 40% of travelers said they were likely to book a “detox trip” within the next year, and nearly half said they’d be interested in hotels that make alcohol-free options easy to find.
What’s striking isn’t just that bars are going zero-proof — it’s that festivals, airlines, and hotel brands are all responding to the same shift. That tells us non-alcoholic drinking isn’t a passing trend; it’s being built into travel, dining, and everyday movement. For non-alcoholic beer brands, this diversification of “where and when people drink” opens up new distribution channels and experiential marketing opportunities. We’ll keep tracking how this plays out.
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